Adoption-specific Treatment Prevention Pilot Trial

Summary

This study seeks to pilot a manualized adoption-specific intervention aimed at providing a preventive intervention for families adopting children ages 5-14 years where family reunification has been terminated and the family is moving toward adoption or who have adopted children from foster care in the last three years. This work will fill a major gap in services to children and families and is developed to improve mental health and family functioning of children adopted from foster care, as well as decrease adoption disruptions. President Clinton's 1997 adoption initiative, The Adoption and Safe Families ACT (ASFA), along with subsequent Congressional initiatives, have provided incentives to States and subsidies for adopting older children with a resultant increase in rates of adoption from foster care from 26,000 in 1995 to 53,000 (stabilized annual rate) beginning in 2002. The mean age at adoption from foster care is now 6 years old. These older children have histories of physical and sexual abuse, neglect, and multiple placements, all factors that predict behavior problems over time. To address this gap in our knowledge of providing care for this vulnerable group, we have developed a manualized adoption-specific intervention for families adopting children from foster care. Because adoptive children generally enter homes with stable, well-functioning parents, interventions may be particularly effective in helping the children adjust and their parents learn to understand and manage children with difficult past histories.

The aim of this current pilot trial is to test this intervention designed to improve the outcomes for children adopted from foster care through a randomized trial. Our hypothesis is that this manualized adoption-specific intervention will be more effective than care as usual in improving child mental health and family functioning outcomes; specifically, families and children who have been randomized to the manualized adoption-specific intervention will show better outcomes on the post-treatment measures and the 3 month follow-up than on the pre-treatment measures than the care as usual families and children.

Conditions

• Prevent Disorders in Children Adopted From Foster Care

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

ADAPT

ADAPT consists of the following modules/sessions: Module 1: Trust, positive coping strategies, and behavior management; Module 2: Developmental understanding of adoption experience; Module 3: Substance abuse prevention; Module 4: Loss and grief issues about birth family and foster care; Module 5: Attachment/joining with adoptive family; Module 6: Search for identity/self -esteem; Module 7: Adoption and the outside world; Module 8: Trauma Treatment (if appropriate)

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Center for Adoption Support and Education

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• University of California, Los Angeles

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Jeanne Miranda, Ph.D. · University of California, Los Angeles

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

5 Years

Max Age

14 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2012-10-31

Primary Completion

2017-09-30

Completion

2018-12-31

Countries

• United States

Study Locations